MTG Salvation

Quote from BloodyRabbit_01 »

People who is *****ting on Jace most likely don’t own copies of it. Jace is definitely a powerful card. Obviously it’s not the gamebreaker that they first thought he was (like Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek) but it’s 100% a stay in the deck. You just have to know when and how to play it.

Or it's just not what it was hyped to be. I've played with in Legacy. The card needs more help in Modern.

I'm with most of you guys : he's not bad at any means. It's juste that the hype was so strong, like it would be the savior of control decks and turn the tide around every time you'd play it. He's for sure to be included in a control deck, but 1-2 copies mostly. He really needs help and Legacy helps him with the card pool. Having more creatures also is a gambreaker for him (as well as failing the bolt test). But when he works, he works very well. I'm happy at 1 copy, could go up to 2, but I'm satisfied with a 1/1 split with Teferi.

Quote from TomCourtenay »

I'm with most of you guys : he's not bad at any means. It's juste that the hype was so strong, like it would be the savior of control decks and turn the tide around every time you'd play it. He's for sure to be included in a control deck, but 1-2 copies mostly. He really needs help and Legacy helps him with the card pool. Having more creatures also is a gambreaker for him (as well as failing the bolt test). But when he works, he works very well. I'm happy at 1 copy, could go up to 2, but I'm satisfied with a 1/1 split with Teferi.

This. No one is saying he is unplayable. His 0 is still the strongest effect printed on walker. The thing is within the context of the format his strength does not shine. I played with Jace in every format he has been legal in and he just feels like a different card in modern. The situation is similar to when he was barely played in standard when jund was the deck. Jace did not become the oppressive beast he was in standard until Alara block rotated out. Currently modern is too creature focused and is based on mana efficiency more so than card advantage and spells. We live in a world where jund is considered clunky and bad because its spells are too expensive.

From the hype, it seems like Jace was supposed to instantly win every game when played. I personally just want a 4-mana permanent that comes down onto late-game board state and Brainstorms every turn. The fact that Jace does other things is just gravy for me.

Quote from TheAnnihilator0798 »

From the hype, it seems like Jace was supposed to instantly win every game when played. I personally just want a 4-mana permanent that comes down onto late-game board state and Brainstorms every turn. The fact that Jace does other things is just gravy for me.

This was my feeling with jace for the most part as well. However, with Teferi, I'm not sure that we actually want that effect (or multiples of it) anymore. I haven't gotten my teferi foils yet, but more and more I'm thinking about going "back" to a more flash-based build with think twice and giving secure + teferi x2 + jace a try. Search for Azcanta finding walkers is in my opinion a huge thing for control in modern--it makes it much more reasonable to play 1-3 walkers in your deck and just depend on hitting them in the mid-game, because search makes it that much easier to find your tools. I think my GWP when I get azcanta online for more than one turn is probably over 80%. The card is super good at fixing the biggest problem modern control has--consistency.

As someone who bought into three jaces thinking they would be mandatory for blue control decks seeing the card almost immediately replaced by teferi is pretty obnoxious. Or just a reason to jump ship to grixis where you can't play teferi :-P

I dunno about that. Teferi minus three actually costs oponent a card and buys several turns where jace minus one is just a tempo thing and only hits creatures. Jace zero leaves him boltable while teferi plus one puts him at five loyalty and gives you two mana to protect him with. Having to fateseal the first turn with jace is basically do nothing so he might as well have suspend one. Both ultimates win the game but take a while.

Saying jtms is miles ahead in power level doesnt feel accurate,

UW is already playing a jace/teferi split, and most of those lists are doing so because they are playing a full set of terminus.

teferi has been particularly well received in jeskai, which i believe is because the deck plays primarily at instant speed. if that theory is correct, then esper draw go seems like a perfect fit.

also any statements about jaces power level being significantly higher than other options are demonstrably false at this point. the card hit the ground running when it joined the format and is now barely ahead of the pack, if at all.

I haven't played Esper in a long while but Teferi has been great in Jeskai. I feel like the Esper would need more cheaper interaction to get better mileage from it.

I tried something : I played a couple of games with both Teferi and Jace in the board and also played a straigh draw-go list with Think Twice and felt that the later was more coherent. I went 2-1-1 both times (got lucky sometimes I must say), but Think Twice withouth Jace, Azcanta and such felt smoother. I'm not saying I have anything scientific here, just a very small sample of games (nothing significant) and my thoughts that follow some comments on the previous page.

The more I play the deck, I find that it has amazing matchups, some terrible matchups too. I'm not sure what to have in order to make the deck better in the early game. Remand would be good maybe, even against combo. Mana Leak could be good, but surely dead. Censor could maybe work out. Thoughts?

Hi, I don't play esper right now, I play UB. Cast Down has been good for me. It's very very close to "kill target creature", at least in my meta. However, I don't think Esper is interested in it because they play Path to Exile which actually kills everything. If the mana ramp matters then Cast Down may be viable but Path is too good I think.

Quote from Cannon Barrage »

Hello fellow esper players !
I was wondering: what do you think about cast down in our deck ? It kill many creatures in modern, isn't dead vs affinity and tezzerator, and it is an instant so it stay in our draw-go theme.

Forgive my english, I'm french !

With Path and Push, no need for it.

Quote from TomCourtenay »

I tried something : I played a couple of games with both Teferi and Jace in the board and also played a straigh draw-go list with Think Twice and felt that the later was more coherent. I went 2-1-1 both times (got lucky sometimes I must say), but Think Twice withouth Jace, Azcanta and such felt smoother. I'm not saying I have anything scientific here, just a very small sample of games (nothing significant) and my thoughts that follow some comments on the previous page.

The more I play the deck, I find that it has amazing matchups, some terrible matchups too. I'm not sure what to have in order to make the deck better in the early game. Remand would be good maybe, even against combo. Mana Leak could be good, but surely dead. Censor could maybe work out. Thoughts?

Not sure I'm understanding correctly, but your point is that playing an old list (without walkers/search/etc) felt better?

That I would definitely agree with. Still have yet to settle on anything I'm actually happy with.

I would suggest against playing remand/mana leak/censor though. This deck did play remand a long time ago, but that was when the card was much better positioned than it is now.
There just aren't enough good counterspells in the format for it to make sense to load up on them, not even mentioning all of the cavern of souls/aether vials/thruns that make counterspells bad as well.


Generally speaking, esper is more in the market for loading up on sweepers than spot removal. We have 4 path, some number of push and some number of blessed alliance which are generally better than cast down.
If you wanted to play straight UB, some number of cast down is probably good.

I had similar feelings about bringing both Jace and sfa into the deck. I believe those cards make more sense if you're tapping out on your turn and playing targeted discard than when you're playing knot, charm, cryptic. They create tension with tapping out early or just tapping low late and then having something squeak through your defense. Teferi could be better because you pass with two mana up and he can minus three any permanent that slips through that turn. Jace is ok if we are saving him for eight mana or a hellbent opponent. I had moved my Elspeth to the board too as I already felt better being as instant speed as possible. Verdict is the outlier because it's unlikely that we cast it and our opponent then resolves more than. We can deal with on the next turn.

Yes, a draw-go list without Jace feels better and smoother. It feels clunky to commit for something when everything is at stake on turn 4-8. I even feel better gambling on a Rev for 4-5 on turn 8-9 and seeing it resolves and then knowing I'm not coming back then having Jace and not being sure how it'll work out.

As you said Cody, I'm not happy with a list, but I'm getting more comfortable with a spin on Wafo-Tapa list.

I think I've said this before, but its really hard for me to know where to go with esper right now.
In the past, I was more or less happy playing the deck I played. Sure, cards like think twice are not exactly powerful, but they were good enough compared to the rest of the format, and the deck cohesion felt good.
But with cards like teferi, jace, search, etc, it feels like moving towards (what jeskai looks like now) is better, because these new cards are just so objectively powerful. Playing think twice for card advantage while other people have search and jace just feels like I'm giving up too much to be instant speed.
The problem is that if you do play jace/teferi/search, esper no longer feels like the best shell to be playing.
Maybe going into more of a midrange shell with lingering souls + planeswalkers is the "best" way to play esper moving forward, but frankly, I didn't build this deck because I enjoy playing lingering souls.


I'm sure something like that has legs, but its just not really the gameplay I'm looking for.


Thats pretty much my most recent attempt. Still pretty similar, though I'm off thoughtseizes, and back on opts.


This is also my next thing to play. It seems... ok, but it might be different enough to give it a shot. Not at all a draw-go deck though.

These seems to be solid lists Cody. I'm not liking only 2 Cryptic though. Being more discard heavy and midrangy could be the way for Esper. Because we lost some edge with instant speed, it's either being full on Search, Jace and Teferi, or going back to the drawboard and seeing what can be done with pure draw go.

That makes sense. Think twice never looked great but it at least looked okay. When lined up against sfa and jace not so much; but its still the best compliment to "draw go". The other thing that has boned this deck a bit is field of ruin. Ghost quarter and tec edge were higher opportunity cost lands so we saw less of them - field is more common now which is helpful for us on one hand, but really hurts the colonnade plan. I dont think I won many games with cc beats anyways but losing the option sure doesnt help.

Others had commented as well that esper charm is not particularly great right now which is our main reason to not be straight uw. This all leads us to a place where grixis or jeskai look like better draw-go shells because bolt and electrolyze or kcommand can replace push and charm and give you the reach that colonnade used to.

All of that leads to "why esper" and I suspect the real esper niche is in tapout control where you use thoughtseize, iok, and brutality to pave the way for jace/lili/gideon/teferi while using lingering souls as defense for walkers and your colonnade replacement win con.

I keep playing draw-go because it's what I love and I'm really trying hard to find answers or a good configuration in the 75 to cover all the field. My issue is probably about the counterspell suite. I'd love to have more to work with other than Logic Knot and Mana Leak. I'm happy with 4 Cryptic Command and 2 Spell Snare, 1 Negate is fine but 3 Logic Knot is average. Either straight up Counterspells or just not effective. I might be hard, but it's just my general thought.

I found a good configuration also against probably one of the worst matchup, namely Tron. 2 Field of Ruin, 2 Ceremonious Rejection in the side and 1 Shadow of Doubt in the main works wonders. For the other nemesis, read Burn here, 2 Dispel, 2 Blessed Alliance and 1 or 2 Timely works pretty effectively.

IMO, having fatal push is a pretty big reason to be esper right now too. Having cheap removal for flameblade adepts, rando humans, pyromancers, as well as the same old goblin guides, robots, tarmogoyfs, etc, is really nice.
I think esper charm is still fine though. I wouldn't say its substantially worse than its been in the past.
While I am inclined to play grixis, or even 4 color control for draw-go, I don't think its the burn thats the big difference maker. The number of games I won with colonnade was just minimal.
I will agree that tapout is probably the more generally-appealing direction to go now, which is a bit of a shame.

I found a great configuration, but then wizards had to go and print new cards and shift the meta.